“You know him?”
“No, no,” she said, too quickly.
“That’s too bad. This Soffit guy said Valdez was willing to pay twenty thousand dollars to have something delivered to him here. And now you tell me he’s gone. That’s too bad.”
The woman hesitated, glancing tentatively around the shop. “Uh, Valdez has a distant cousin. Perhaps he could be located if it is so important.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Are you staying in the hotel?”
“Traveling through.”
“Ah, how do you know this man, Soffit?”
“I didn’t know him. Just met him the one time.”
“I see. Do you have the delivery with you, may I ask?”
“Tell Valdez to get his twenty grand up front by tonight. Cash. US.”
“I will look for the cousin immediately. Where may he find you?”
“I’ll be here this evening. The restaurant, those tables back there by the garden.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The woman followed him out into the corridor.
He stopped near the entrance. “You do know Soffit’s dead, right?”
She pressed both hands flat above her breasts. Her eyes searched his, fearful.
“You know anything about that?” he persisted.
“Oh, no. Certainly not.”
“The way I see it, Soffit was killed for the photos, and I don’t know anybody who wants them except this Valdez.”
“Señor—”
“I wouldn’t want to wake up the same as Soffit. Dead.”
“Please, you will speak with Valdez of these things. I am too confused.”
“Tell him to bring money. No money, no photos.”
The woman’s worried eyes searched his face. “I can only tell the cousin—” she began when Ana came barging in through the entrance.
Ana stopped, her heated gaze fixing on him. Her shirt was damp, hair plastered to the back of her neck from the shower.
29
Valdez
“DAMN YOU, ROBERT!”
The shopkeeper stepped back in alarm.
Robert held up the gift box. “Hey, I got you a present.” He took Ana by the arm and attempted to steer her back to the entrance but she flung him off.
“Señor,” mumbled the saleslady, “what is going on?”
“She’s okay. You know, just a little jealous.” He shifted the strapped document case on his shoulders and headed to the entrance.
Ana paused, looked from one to the other, and then followed him out into the glare. He turned in the opposite direction of the Hotel Principal. Ana limped after him. Ignoring her, he walked for two blocks, then turned right again before flagging a taxi. They climbed inside and he had the cab circle back to the Hotel Principal. All in silence.
Once back in their room, he began unpacking. Ana positioned herself in the bathroom doorway, arms folded.
“Jealous, huh?”
He looked up, fists on his hips. “That little scene was exactly why I wanted you to go on back to the States. You come barging in there, no idea in hell what was going on.” He took the new shaving kit and pushed past her into the bathroom.
“We have to talk. Rationally,” she said.
“You could have gotten us both killed.” He turned the shower on, adjusted the water temperature.
“I thought we were in this together.”
“Let’s get this straight. When it comes to those photos, there isn’t any we. There’s me. Period.”
“I know what,” she said, “lets you be Big Daddy Robert and I’ll be Little Missy Ana in the kitchen.”
“Listen, you don’t seem to get it. This is a tricky situation we’re in here.”
“I’m not sure which of us isn’t getting it.”
“You go on now. I’m going to shower.”
She sighed, softening a little. “When you finish, I’d like to do a little shopping, find a nice outfit to go with that beautiful rebozo.”
“You go on. Here, I’ll get you some money.”
“I had rather wait for you.”
He hesitated, then pulled the door shut, adjusted the water, shucked off his clothes and stepped into the shower.
So why did Ana want him to tag along, shopping? Like she was afraid to let him out of her sight. Afraid he might skip out with the goods, the way he had with Mickey? But then, back at the eatery she had a chance to make off with the whole works and instead had come back for him. That still didn’t make sense.
Ana tapped on the door, pushed it open a crack. “Robert?”
He poked his head around the shower curtain.
“May I come in?” She stepped inside without waiting for an answer. “So. You like your women singing in the shower?” Flushed with a kind of dewy heat, she began removing her clothes. She stepped out of her panties and into the tub enclosure and pulled the curtain around them. Water sprayed off her body, rivulets trickling down between her breasts into the coppery V between her legs. She took the soap from him and began to rub it over his chest, working her way down, singing softly: “Singing in the rain / Just singing in the rain / I’m happy again…” She put the soap bar in the caddy. She smiled. “I think we should save the shower singing until you’re better able to concentrate.”
ROBERT STOOD ON the balcony waiting for Ana to finish dressing. The evening sky had softened to lilac, tinting the town of Oaxaca a soft mauve. On the street below, sparrows fluffed and shimmied, rippling the flat, mirrored sheets of rainwater.
He wore khaki dress pants and the seersucker jacket over a teal-green T-shirt. He studied his hands. Though scrubbed raw-red in the shower and again in the bathroom sink, they still felt of Mickey’s waxy flesh.
Across the street a young boy and girl ran barefoot and shouting through the darkening pools. The birds fluttered into the evening trees and disappeared.
BIBLE IN HAND, document case hung on one shoulder, Ana on his arm, they entered the Hotel Camino Real. It was the first time he’d seen her dressed up. Stunning in new black slacks, a champagne-colored blouse, a silver lamé belt and black, low-heeled pumps. The new blouse went nicely with the new rebozo. She wore her hair up, strands spiraling down at her temples. The effect was one of elegance, and the few people they met turned for a second look.
The maître d’ seated them at a candlelit table beneath an open arch alongside the garden. Blue jacaranda flowered nearby, large and showy, it’s perfume intoxicating on the balmy evening air. Only two other tables were occupied at this early hour, and the three waiters stood at ease back near the entrance to a kitchen. One, a small man with a sharp Mayan face, came forward and presented them with leather-bound menus and a wine list.
“Are you having a drink?” Ana asked.
Robert widened his eyes in phony alarm. “Well, yes. But I don’t get drunk, if that’s what you have in mind!”
Ana laughed out loud and while he knew it was partly from nervousness, it sounded nice against all that had happened. She shook her head, sobering again to the occasion. “That was, what, only four nights ago?”
Robert ordered Don Julio Reposado with sangrita for each of them.
When the waiter left, Robert gave Ana a slow appraising look. “I like your hair up like that. Zee bare neck, it make me vant to bite you, to suck you bloood.” He affected the wet hiss of a vampire.
“Oooo! Exciiiting!”
A waiter approached, but it was a different waiter, an older distinguished looking man with silver hair combed back from a high, aristocratic forehead. Robert’s pulse quickened; it was the man who had checked out just ahead of him in the Acapulco Princes the morning after Soffit’s death, the man with the badge on his belt.
“Señor,” the man said, gesturing at the Bible. “You are a child of God?” He removed their drinks from a round metal tray and set them on the table.
Robert casually hung one arm over the back of his chair, his hand near the .380 under his blazer. “A child of God, yes, in the s
ense that we all are.”
The waiter straightened, holding the tray against his chest. He had quick eyes and pronounced laugh lines fanning out over high cheekbones. “I believe it was Karl Marx who said Religion is the opiate of the people.”
“Karl Marx. Mm–hmm. And you, you’re a communist?”
The man bowed slightly. “I am your waiter, señor Valdez.”
Robert nodded. “Please, sit down.”
“Señor, waiters do not sit with the guests. It is not done.”
“Very well. But before we make any trade-offs here, I have a few questions.”
Ana stared, shifted in her chair.
Valdez nodded. “We cannot talk here. Please, if you will follow me?”
“Follow you where?”
“The kitchen. There we may talk freely.”
Robert considered only a moment, then stood and scooped up the Bible. It was a considered risk, but he had his .380, and Valdez wasn’t likely to pull anything in such a public place.
Valdez bowed to Ana. “Señorita? If you would be so kind?”
She glanced at Robert, a glimmer of fear. They left their drinks. The other waiters watched as they followed Valdez back, entering the kitchen against a wave of humid heat smelling of spices, grilled meat, and something he couldn’t identify.
Two women bent over tubs of sudsy water. A chef and two assistants tended copper skillets and cast-iron pots on a very long and very old black-iron range. An endless assortment of cookware hung from overhead racks. A dozen headless chickens lay sprawled along a stone countertop. Their curled yellow feet reminded Robert of the beggar’s uplifted hand back in Mexico City.
Clasping the serving tray to his chest, Valdez seated them at an old Formica-and-chrome table some distance from the kitchen workers. On the table were a rubber-banded deck of playing cards and a jar lid of stubbed-out cigarette butts. Bible in hand, Robert seated Ana then himself.
Their original waiter appeared with a bottle of Don Julio Añejo, a pitcher of sangrita and six small liqueur glasses on a tray. They waited in silence as he poured three glasses of each, cleared the cigarette butts and cards from the table, and left.
Valdez held the serving tray flat to his chest with one hand and lifted his drink to Ana with the other.
“Señorita,” he said, “to your great beauty and eternal good health.” Valdez took a sip of tequila and then a sip of sangrita—a fifty-fifty mix of orange and tomato juice with a shot of hot chili sauce. Robert sipped his in turn. Ana barely touched hers, but set the glass back on the table and locked her hands in her lap.
A boy of around twelve entered the kitchen. He gave Robert and Ana a cursory glance, then took a butcher knife and began to sharpen it, turning the crank on an old-fashioned sandstone wheel mounted in a wooden frame.
Valdez eyed Robert across the table. “So. If I may ask, how is it you have the photos?”
“A guy by the name of Soffit said you were willing to pay twenty grand for them. Seems he didn’t have time to deliver them himself.”
A hint of humor gathered in the pronounced lines around Valdez’s eyes. “Ah, yes. I think he is in a big hurry to get out of Dodge, eh?”
Robert allowed himself a small smile. From Valdez’s adept English and his casual use of the ‘get out of Dodge’ cliché, he had clearly spent time in the States.
“This Soffit of yours,” said Valdez, “he gets more than he bargained for. Eduardo was to deliver the photographs to me. Soffit did not know this when he killed him and assumed his identity.”
Valdez was baiting him, seeing what he knew, and while Robert tried not to show surprise, his mind was churning: if Soffit had killed the original courier, then of course Fowler was behind it. And the name itself—Eduardo—led to disturbing conclusions as both Robert and Fowler had been associated with an Eduardo Agustino in their early days. If Robert remembered correctly, Eduardo was somewhere in the Mideast.
Robert was aware of Ana, her gaze burning on him.
“I’m not interested in your circle of friends,” Robert said. “But now that you bring it up, who’re you working for?”
“Working for? I am in the import-export business, much as you are in the boat business.”
Robert studied him. “You’re not regular police or military. So let me guess. Interpol?”
Valdez shrugged. “The photos are of high-ranking al Qaeda members and will be turned over to the proper authorities.”
“Good. I can live with that.”
The boy began opening up the chickens with the knife, digging the intestines out of the body cavities. He cut away the hearts, livers, and gizzards and pitched them into a cauldron of water. He slopped the entrails into a galvanized tub.
Valdez watched Robert, his smile humorless now. “You have been inactive for quite a long time. Either that, or flying well below the international radar.”
“Inactive?”
“Come, now. The question is, are you here in an official capacity, or are you freelancing?”
The air filled with the smell of scalded feathers as the boy, catching the chickens by their feet, plunged their carcasses up and down in a tub of boiling water and then laid them steaming back on the countertop.
“You were acquainted with this Eduardo Agustino,” Valdez continued. “Or perhaps you knew him as Abda Mufti?”
Again, Robert kept his surprise in check.
Valdez turned to Ana. “And you, señorita, you were traveling with Helmut Heinrich at the time of Soffit’s death.”
She looked at Valdez, her own surprise plainly visible.
“You know Helmut?” Robert said. “How about the two guys in a white Chevy? Who’re they?”
Valdez frowned. “Perhaps you are not a professional after all.”
“A professional?”
“A professional knows who wants to kill him. And why.”
“I told you. I sell boats. This other crap, that’s between you and your boys, or whoever.”
“So. We are back to that.” Valdez peeled the tray away from his chest. Ana sat back, a thin breathy noise escaping her as Valdez took a small-caliber pistol from a breakaway holster attached to the underside. Valdez scooped the Bible from the table with his free hand. “Please forgive me, but I must take the photos.”
Robert looked at the pistol. “You know what? I’ve got one of those. Bigger than that little pooty-popper, too. I bet we could shoot this place to pieces. Probably kill each other in the process. Yes, sir. Right here in the most elegant hotel in Oaxaca. Boy, oh, boy. That’d make the evening news, wouldn’t it?”
Ana went pale.
Valdez spoke to the boy in Spanish. The boy rinsed his hands, dried them on a towel, then took a rubber-banded cigarillo box from a bin and brought it to Valdez.
“The money, as agreed,” Valdez said. He glanced at Ana. “I hope you will forgive this inhospitality, señorita but, please, I cannot take chances with the situation so uncertain.”
“Robert,” she mumbled, “p–please, let’s just go.”
Robert glanced around the humid kitchen. Everyone seemed to be ignoring the fact that Valdez was holding a pistol on him.
“Soffit was a stringer,” Valdez continued. “Perhaps someone knew Eduardo had the diamonds and sent Soffit to take them? What do you think of this scenario?”
“Wait a minute,” Ana interrupted, looking from one to the other. “What’s this about diamonds?”
Valdez shrugged. “Surely you know Eduardo and the terrorists robbed a De Beers courier? They got away with millions of dollars in diamonds.”
Robert sighed. “And you think Soffit murdered Eduardo for the diamonds. Yeah. We get it.”
“But—” Valdez lifted one finger in admonition— “unknown to Soffit, the terrorists sold the diamonds. This I think you do not know.”
Again Robert struggled not to react.
“Yes. You are surprised. Eh?”
“So? What does that have to do with me?”
Ana’s ent
ire demeanor had altered. She sat tensely erect, looking at one, then the other.
“Perhaps nothing,” said Valdez by reply. “Perhaps this is merely rumor. It is a mystery how, if the terrorists sold the diamonds, another rumor suggest they are being smuggled into the US. This is the mystery, eh? I had hoped you might tell me?”
“All I’m sure of is that I brought you the photos. That, and I can use twenty grand.”
Valdez slid the cigarillo box across the table to Robert. “I thought you should know.”
Robert looked at the box, then at Valdez. “Open it,” he said.
Valdez paused, a hint of merriment tweaking the laugh lines around his eyes. “The good spy, he is always suspicious.” Valdez snapped the rubber band off and flipped the lid back to expose two packets of paper-banded hundred-dollar bills.
“Turn it over. Dump the money on the table.”
Valdez smiled openly, at ease now as he emptied the money out.
“I guess I can trust that there’s twenty grand here,” Robert said. “An honest man like yourself.”
“Yes. I am…what you call? A square shooter.”
Robert replaced the bills and stuffed the cigarillo box in the document case alongside the DVD projector.
He smiled. “One can’t be too careful when dealing with spies and rumormongers, can one.” Valdez snapped to attention with the pistol as Robert reached inside his jacket. Robert paused, then slowly removed an envelope. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he placed it on the table before Valdez. “Me too. A square shooter.”
Valdez’s gaze shifted from the envelope to the Bible and back to Robert.
“Like you say, a professional shouldn’t make assumptions,” Robert said.
Valdez laughed aloud, flushed but obviously a good sport as he dumped the Ektachromes out and held them up to the light, at ease again. “Ah, yes, he breathed softly. Good. Very good.”
The boy hung the chickens up by their feet on hooks. He plucked steamy feathers into the tub along with the guts, and then tossed the clean-picked carcasses into a second tub, seemingly oblivious as Valdez tucked the pistol inside his vest and stood up from the table.
The Dogs of Mexico Page 21
